The Sixth Dwarf
by ChaosCarlos
Summary: When the entire crew of the Red Dwarf, appart from Dave Lister are killed by radiation exposure, Holly follows protocol and sets course for deep space until the radiation levels drop to safe managable levels to revive the only remaining crewman left alive. After three million years Holly can finally carry out the Captains last order, the Sixth Day Protocol. RD/6thDay crossover.


Disclaimer: I do not in anyway shape or form own the popular TV series 'Red Dwarf' nor the movie 'The Sixth Day'. They belong to the BBC and Phoenix Pictures/Columbia Tristar respectively.

Summary: When the entire crew of the Red Dwarf, appart from Dave Lister are killed by radiation exposure, Holly follows protocol and sets course for deep space until the radiation levels drop to safe managable levels to revive the only remaining crewman left alive. After three million years Holly can finally carry out the Captains last order, the Sixth Day Protocol. RD/6thDay crossover.

* * *

When Dave Lister awoke from his six month stint in stasis he expected to be met by either his mates or Rimmer. His mates would've congratulated him with a celebratory can of larger for not givin' in to the man. Rimmer, well he'd have this smug little look on his face while bouncing on his heels, report book in one hand and doing that stupid smegging salute of his with the other. He'd also be ready to tell Dave about all the parties, birthdays and random bouts of debauchery he'd missed. The smeghead.

Which was why Dave was surprised to find no one waiting for him, not even that rambling pillock Frank Todhunter. However it did seem that Holly was waiting to greet him. Which was odd as most of Holly's time was usualy taken up by the more senior officers and crewmen, not lowly third technicians like himself.

"Good morning Dave. It is now safe for you to emerge from stasis."

"I only just got in." Dave replied. Still confused about where all his so called mates were.

"Please proceed to the Drive Room for debriefing."

Dave wandered into one of the nearby rooms, wondering where everyone was since the last time the ship had been this empty was eight months ago when the entire crew except for himself, Rimmer and a few of the boys in the Janitorial Department contracted the Jovian Mumps, which was odd since the Jovian Mumps were a mild, easily cured if not embarrassing and exceptionally painful STD found almost exclusivly amongst Titan's male gigolo population, for some reason women were completely immune to it but that didn't stop them from being carriers, so they were quarantined along with everyone else. This begged the question of how it got onto the ship, since the Red Dwarf hadn't been to or accepted anyone who'd transferred from Titan in over a year.

"Where is everybody Hol?"

Looking around Dave finds the room in near perfect condition, the only odd thing being the strange white powder in neat little clumps all over the place.

"They're dead Dave."

Dave sticked his fingers into one of the clumps of powder, giving it a sniff before tasting it.

"Who is?"

"Everybody Dave."

"What? Captain Hollister?"

"Everybody's dead Dave."

Dave sticks his fingers back into the clump of powder for another taste, trying to figure out what it is.

"What? Todhunter?"

"Everybody's dead Dave."

"What? Selby?"

"They're ALL dead. Everybody's dead Dave."

Walking through the ship towards the drive room, Dave continues asking for the crew and receiving the same answer.

"Petersen isn't is he?"

"Everybody's dead Dave!"

"Not Chen?"

"Gordon Bennett, Yes Chen! Everybody! Everybody's dead Dave!"

"Rimmer?"

"He's dead Dave! Everybody's dead! Everybody. Is. Dead. Dave!"

Here Dave pauses, leaning against a railing looking thoughtful and thinking about everything Holly's just told him.

"Wait. Are you trying to tell me everybody's dead?" Dave jumps down some steps on his quest to the drive room while Holly annoyed with Dave's act of idiocy grumbles, "I should have never let him out in the first place."

* * *

Arriving at the drive room Dave goes to sit, brushing a load of white powder off the chair before settling down. Here he began inspecting another clump of powder, still wondering what it was. Taking a moment to look around he then continued his discussion with Holly.

"How?"

"The drive plate was inefficiently repaired. It blew and the entire crew was subjected to a lethal dose of cadmium-2 before I could seal the area.

"This is terrible! And why is it so dirty around here? What is this stuff?" Dave dips his fingers in the clump of powder before sticking it into his mouth.

"That is Catering Officer Olaf Petersen."

Shocked and disgusted Dave does a spit-take, trying to brush as much of the powder off his tounge as he can.

"I've been eating half the crew!?" Now pointing at a lump of powder in the middle of the room, "and who's that?"

"That's Captain Hollister."

Dave still disgusted with sticking bits of the crew in his mouth asked about the powdery lump next to the former captain "And that's Todhunter?"

"No. That's Second Technician Rimmer."

"Oh yeah? I didn't recognize him without his report book." taking a moment to think about it he asked, "what was Rimmer doing in the drive room?"

"He was explaining to the captain why he hadn't sealed the drive plate properly."

"So wait Hol. How long was I in stasis?"

"Well I couldn't release you until the radiation reached a safe background level."

Dave being slightly worried and a bit suspicious of Holly's non-answer asked again.

"How _LONG!?_"

"Three Million Years."

"**THREE MILLION YEARS!?** ...I've still got that library book." Dave suddenly remembered something and looked over towards the seat where his long time crush usualy sat during her on duty hours. "And what about Krissie? What about Krissie Kochanski?"

"She's dead, Dave."

"Oh Ay!" Dave moaned in sudden regret. Holly hearing this attempted to offer up his own sympathy for the lost crewmember but failed utterly.

"I don't suppose it's any consolation, but if she were still alive, the age difference would be insurmountable."

"She was part of me plan. I never got round to telling her, but she was going to come with me to Fiji. She was going to wear a white dress and ride the horses and I was going to take care of everything else. It was me plan. I planned it."

"Well, she won't be much use to you on Fiji now. Not unless it snows and you need something to grit the path with."

"Holly!"

"Sorry. I'm sorry about that. I've been on my own for three million years, and I'm just used to saying what I think. I think I've gone a bit peculiar, to tell you the truth."

"So everyone's dead? I'm on me own? There's just me?"

"Well, technically speaking, yes."

"What do you mean, 'technically speaking?'"

Here Captain Hollister walks in very much alive. Dave looks on in shock, turning from the captain to Holly's screen and back to the captain.

"Holly I thought you said the Captain was dead?"

"He was dead Dave and now he's alive again."

"How?"

The captain finding this just slightly amusing concidering the situation cuts in. "Holly you haven't told Lister about the Sixth Day protocol yet?"

"No captain, we've just gotten to the point where Dave's coming to terms with yours and everyone elses untimely death."

The captain had a look on his face that just screams 'Oh beautiful'. He hadn't had coffee in three million years and wasn't up to dealing with Dave's little problem of not reading the fine print in his contracts.

"Listen up Lister cause I'm only going to say this once. The Sixth Day protocol have gone into effect, meaning that in the event of a catastrophic failure and the premature death of the entire crew due to either the irradiation of the ship for an unspecified amount of time or lethal exposure to either gas or the vacuum of space then the entire crew can be revived through mass cloning and syncordings taken of their minds. Do you understand so far?"

Dave still looking a bit confused latches onto the one bit of trivia he knows about cloning. He'd been a bit of a history-buff back in the day especially parts of history where things went wrong for some poor smeghead who'd either ended up without a penny to his name, in prison or dead. Like that Drucker fellow who was discovered to have been an illigal human clone after his company went belly up and the government took over everything to do with cloning.

"Wait a minute sir. You're saying you're a clone? Isn't that like illigal?"

"If I'd been cloned on Earth, Mars or even say Titan then yes I'd be ordered destroyed since I normally wouldn't have any rights as a clone. However as employees of the Jupiter Mining Corporation you, me and the rest of the crew are exempt from those laws as long as we can prove we were cloned while under the companies Sixth Day protocol, understand?"

"I don't remember hearing about this during that introduction video when I signed up."

"That Lister is because the company doesn't openly advertise about this protocol for obvious reasons, plus it was written into the fine print of your contract so you should have known about it when you read it."

"Oh that explains it, I never read me the fine print on anything, not contracts or on those little packet of peanuts, it's always so boring to read that it puts me right to sleep."

It was at this point that in walked Rimmer with a big metal H on his forehead, signifying that he was currently the ships sole hologram. Which was odd since if what the captain said was true then he would be cloned along with the rest of the crew so there was no point in making him a hologram. When he place himself directly infront of the captain the first thing he did was to stomp both feet on the floor and do that stupid smegging salute of his. Dave was used to this behaviour from his bunkmate but he couldn't resist saying something about that big H on Rimmer's forehead.

"Rimmer! You're a hologram?!"

"Yes. That's because I'm dead. Dead as a can of spam. And it's all thanks to you.

"You what?"

Rimmer however ignored Dave in favour of conversing with the captain, a person of higher intelligence. Rimmer however did concede that talking to common garden plants was concidered a conversation with beings of higher intelligence than Dave Lister.

"Captain I must complain! Why did you order Holly to make me the ships hologram instead of being put on the list of cloned crewmen? I'm a valuable member of the crew sir!" Rimmer tries desperately to ignore Dave waving his hands through his holographic body. "And him sir!" he points to Dave "Why isn't he being flushed out the nearest airlock for mass murder!?" This stumps Dave and deeply offended him at the same time.

"Me!? What did I do!?"

"If you hadn't kept that stupid cat, Lister, and hadn't been sent to stasis, I would have had some help when I was mending the drive plate, and I wouldn't be dead."

"What's it feel like?"

"Death? It's like being on holiday with a group of Germans."

"No, I mean being a hologram."

The captain not wanting to put up with any more of the two man show, he interrupts before the conversation decends into name calling and Dave's love of using the word smeg in relation to Rimmer in as many ways as possible.

"Gentlemen if I may?" When they both nodded silently he continued. "Rimmer, you are a hologram for one simple reason, you managed without even trying, to kill the entire crew. I've decided that due to the fact you're only guilty of being a complete smegging idiot I won't erase your syncording on general principal. Instead you will spend the next five years as a hologram. You will recieve no pay or shore leave, you will also be unable to touch, eat, sleep or even poop. At the end of this punishment when your body is cloned you will be demoted to fourth technician and not permitted to repair any of the ships systems without first re-qualifying through the fourth, third and second technician exams and even then a senior crewman or officer will constantly be watching over you. Do you understand Rimmer?"

"Yes sir. With your permission sir?" When the captain nodded, Rimmer stiffened his jaw, saluted the captain again before marching out the drive room. The captain turned towards Lister wondering what to do about the man who might have been able to stop Rimmer from causing such a monumental cockup. Then he remembered who he was talking about and knew it probably wouldn't have changed anything.

"As for you Lister, Holly's been telling me something about your cat living on to breed and something about radiation induced mutations and three million years of evolution. So I have a job for you Mr cat-lover.

* * *

Authors Note: A strange little crossover that just suddenly entered my head while I was watching the Sixth Day.


End file.
